Tuesday, November 29, 2016

2017 will be the 70th anniversary year of the so-called "Roswell Crash" (as well as the Kenneth Arnold sighting - and thus Flying Saucers themselves). And preparations are already underway to observe the anniversary in proper style. (Are they ever!).

Ad for this year's Roswell UFO Festival

For a number of years, the Roswell UFO Museum has sponsored a UFO Festival each year around the anniversary of the original "incident" in early July. The 2017 program has not yet been finalized. It is scheduled to run from Thursday, June 29 to Sunday, July 2, 2017. Speakers at the 2016 festival included (among others) Stanton Friedman,
Kathleen Marden, Donald Schmitt and Thomas Carey (in spite of their
recent Roswell Slides fiasco), Ben Hansen, Derrell Sims, Yvonne Smith,
and Travis Walton.

Quite frankly, I am unable to think of any other instances where there were two simultaneous, and potentially rival, UFO conferences in the same city. (And Roswell isn't much of a city!) Will there be enough eager conference-goers to successfully fund both events? Will these two groups be able to coexist without feuding? (I'm told that relations between them are quite cordial, even cooperative, at least so far). And more importantly, will anybody at either of these conferences come up with any credible new information about the Roswell incident that has any significance? Or will it be just more of the same old, same old - extraordinary claims with little or no proof? Whichever it is, this will be interesting!

And hold the presses: MUFON has just announced,

We are pleased to announce the 2017 MUFON Symposium July 21-23,
at the beautiful JW Marriott in Las Vegas, NV

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About Me

Robert Sheaffer is a writer with a lifelong interest in astronomy and the question of life on other worlds. He is one of the leading skeptical investigators of UFOs, a founding member of the UFO Subcommittee of the well-known Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI, formerly CSICOP). He is also a founding director and past Chairman of the Bay Area Skeptics, a local skeptics' group in the San Francisco Bay area .
Mr. Sheaffer has written the "Psychic Vibrations" column in The Skeptical Inquirer for over 30 years, and his book "Psychic Vibrations" reprints some of those columns. He is also the author of "UFO Sightings" (Prometheus Books, 1998), and has appeared on many radio and TV programs. His writings and reviews have appeared in such diverse publications as OMNI, Scientific American, Spaceflight, Astronomy, The Humanist, Free Inquiry, Reason, and others.
Mr. Sheaffer lives near San Diego, California. He has worked as a data communications engineer in the Silicon Valley, and sings in professional opera productions.